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Moral Disengagement and Gangs

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Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media

Abstract

Raised levels of moral disengagement, the process of disengaging moral reasoning from one’s conduct, have been shown to facilitate antisocial behaviour in both adults and youth. The process has drawn increased interest in gang literature and to some extent programmes, but has yet to fully bridge the research-practice divide. This chapter discusses the place of moral psychology in gang-focused prevention, intervention and research. After an introduction to relevant theories, it introduces the concept of discriminant moral disengagement in gang versus non-gang delinquents in the United Kingdom, as defined by the Eurogang Youth Survey. The implications of how discriminant moral disengagement might influence how we work with gangs are considered, concluding in a discussion of the function, necessity and possible future of moral psychology and gangs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Street code describes a set of informal rules that dictate gang members’ conduct and status. See Matsuda, Melde, Taylor, Freng, & Esbensen, 2012.

  2. 2.

    Grime music originated in London, UK, during the early 2000s. It is a form of electronic dance music that grew out of garage and jungle, distinguishing itself lyrically through its focus on the gritty, “grim(e)y” reality of urban life, notably in London’s council estates (Barron, 2013; Bramwell, 2015a, 2015b; Fatsis 2019). There has been historic and ongoing debate around grime’s link to crime despite the genre gaining mainstream recognition in the United Kingdom (Fatsis, 2019; Pinkney & Robinson-Edwards, 2018).

  3. 3.

    Purposeful inclusion of a moral component was determined by whether a publication explicitly referred to a process or phrase including the word “moral” within their intervention description.

  4. 4.

    Drill music originated in Chicago’s South Side during the early 2010s. After starting to gain mainstream attention in 2012, drill gained prominence in London. The subgenre UK drill has been called “the new grime” by some, but is regarded as focusing more on violence and crime as a way of life (Thapar, 2017).

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    Miriam Dyberg-Tengroth & Vincent Egan

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Dyberg-Tengroth, M., Egan, V. (2020). Moral Disengagement and Gangs. In: Melde, C., Weerman, F. (eds) Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47214-6_14

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